John Earman is an American philosopher and professor of history and philosophy of science at the University of Pittsburgh. He is perhaps best known for contributions to the history and foundations of modern physics—especially space-time theories, and often with the question of determinism in view—and confirmation theory.

Earman completed his PhD at Princeton in 1968, under the direction of Carl G. Hempel. After brief appointments at University of California, Los Angeles, and the Rockefeller University, where he enjoyed tenure for a year before its philosophy department was disbanded in 1973, Earman spent twelve years at the University of Minnesota, where he was promoted to full professor in 1974. He moved to Pittsburgh in 1985.

Spacetime and Determinism

A theme of Earman's earliest publications is that progress can be made on perennial philosophical problems by bringing modern physics and mathematics, thoroughly and properly understood, to bear on...